Aquaponics - Another sick fish

I have two more fish that are not out of the woods as far as their recovery goes. They are off the bottom, and swimming with the use of one side fin.

This would indicate to me that they are tending to float in an unbalanced way. For some reason when fish get sick, they seem to lose control of their swim bladder.

A swim bladder is an organ in place of the lungs, but fish use it to control their buoyancy by adding or removing air (or some gas of some other kind - I don't know) . This saves them a stack of energy in not having to swim to maintain whatever depth they want.

So a sick fish often shows problems controlling their swim bladder.

I've never noticed it before, but I've also never spent so much time looking for problems with a fish, but it might be an early indicator to a problem when you see a fish using only one of its front fins.

This Could be due to the fish trying to counter a tendency to roll due to not having its buoyancy right.

The swim bladder also aids in stabilization in an upright aspect because it sits above the fishes centre of gravity. By having their floatyest bit at the top, the also get to save energy by not have to fin in order to stay upright. The rest of their body weight acts like a boats keel.

But all that only works if there is just the right amount of floaty in their swim bladder. And I'm guessing that the fin work I'm seeing is as a result of having to adjust for faulty floaties.

If this observation is correct, it might be a useful tool in early detection of a problem.

But I wont ever know if it is correct.